Saturday, 20 February 2016

The phrase ‘strange bedfellows’ doesn’t really do justice
to the oddballs lining up to support the call for the UK to leave the EU.

The eccentric and earnestly intellectual Justice Secretary
Michael Gove teams up with Iain Duncan Smith – the self-styled ‘Quiet Man’ who
had to be toppled as Tory leader some years ago in quite a noisy coup. They
find themselves in the same camp as maverick Labour parliamentarian Kate Hoey,
UKIP’s Nigel Farage and George Galloway, the former MP for Celebrity Big
Brother.

If Boris de Pfeffel Johnson breaks his silence and say that
he’s joining them, it would seem entirely fitting. The outgoing London Mayor
would be the celebrity icing on the fruitcake.

Under normal circumstances, you’d have to bet that the
campaign to ‘remain’ had a pretty good chance against this mob. Surely common
sense will prevail and the public will rally around the mainstream politicians
of all political parties who understand the importance of our involvement with
the European Union?

But these are not normal times.

Last year, the Labour Party elected as its leader someone
so desperately unsuited to the job that it finds itself languishing 14 points
behind the Tories in some polls. Corbyn has opposed the EU and its precursor
organisations at every stage of his career, so his Damascene conversion lacks
any real credibility. This is reflected in his half-hearted contributions in
which he bizarrely attacks David Cameron for failing to negotiate the
transformation of Europe into a socialist utopia.

As a result of Labour’s incredible weakness right now, we
are left in a frightening place. The best chance of a clear victory in the June
23rd referendum is if the public listens to David Cameron and
follows his lead. Although I could never place my own confidence in a man of
such patrician bluster and arrogance, polls do show that he seems to carry a
lot of credibility with the public.

He has, however, made a big mistake by framing the
referendum debate around the supposed ‘deal’ he’s managed to squeeze out of
Europe.

We are not voting in the summer on whether the seven-year
brake is a good thing or a bad thing. Neither are we deciding on whether we
have been rescued from some mythical pressure to join the Euro. The vote is
about whether the UK isolates itself from a world which is now completely
interconnected. It is a choice over whether we want to retain influence or
throw it away. And ultimately, it’s probably even a vote over whether we wish
the UK to continue in its current form at all.

The piece of paper that Cameron clutches from Brussels can
blow away in the wind. If it does, our economic and political future may take
flight with it.